The Sleeping Swan
by Elleirabird
Summary: Anna Skelt has come to forks for only one reason: to kill a vampire named Edward Cullen by getting him to fall in love with her...alternate universe, rated T for violence and some sexual stuff. Bella/Edward. Well, kind of.
1. Prologue

**The Sleeping Swan  
**By Elleirabird

* * *

**A/N: **I'm not a Twilight fan. I pretty much hate the series in the entirety. So why am I here, writing a _Twilight_ fanfiction? I don't know either. But I woke up morning and was thinking about how much I hate Twilight (you know, normal morning thoughts) and this story popped into my head. And, for some reason, I'm going to write it. :)

**Synopsis:** Anna Skelt has come to forks for only one reason: to kill a vampire named Edward Cullen by getting him to fall in love with her. But there's something else lurking in the forests of Forks, something that the Order didn't know about. Something that might kill Anna first. Alternate Universe.

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the various ways I could die.

I mean, honestly, it's hard not to when you have a job like mine. When your lifestyle involves hunting and killing on a relative basis, seeing the blood and hearing the screams of the dying – well, eventually you begin to wonder how it'll happen to you. I had always imagined it would be in a fight, you know – a worthy death. I know. Sounds cliché. But if I had a choice in the matter, I would have gone out fighting. But no, of course not. Instead I was going out like this, like a victim.

How could I have been so stupid? I should have done better than this. I shouldn't have played my part so well. But it was too late to do anything about it.

The vampire grinned as he shattered my leg.

Everything became dark.


	2. Forks

**The Sleeping Swan  
**By Elleirabird

* * *

**A/N: **First chapter. More will be explained in later chapters.

**Synopsis:** Anna Skelt has come to forks for only one reason: to kill a vampire named Edward Cullen by getting him to fall in love with her. But there's something else lurking in the forests of Forks, something that the Order didn't know about. Something that might kill Anna first. Alternate Universe.

* * *

****

CHAPTER ONE – FORKS

"Bella," Renee said. Her lips twitched, and I knew it was taking all her mental fortitude not to burst out laughing in the middle of the airport. "You don't have to do this."

"I'll be fine," I muttered, swinging my carry-on onto the opposite shoulder. The smile widened as I punched her in the arm, hitting her hard enough to make it hurt. Leaning in closer, I whispered, "You know I love doing this."

Renee smiled for real this time, wrapping me in a tight hug. The action was uncomfortable for me, but I allowed it, for her sake. When she stepped back, finally, she looked much more solemn. Renee and I looked uncannily similar now, thanks to some hair dye on my part. My natural hair color was a light reddish-brown, and short. Now it was long, wavy and a near-black shade of brown. That, and a few months of continually staying out of the sun, and I looked the part.

For an instant the mask flickered, and Renee nodded seriously, almost respectfully, at me.

"Good luck, Anna," Renee whispered. A little louder, she said, "Keep in touch, okay, dear?"

Our code for _don't get yourself killed. _

"Got it." The overhead announcer said the name of my flight, and I glanced around. "Gotta go – see you later."

Those last words of mine hung in my mind as I anxiously passed through security and customs, walking down the terminal to find my gate. _See you later_ – there was a good chance I'd never see Renee again. She was being transferred to a new location – which she wasn't allowed to tell me about, naturally – while I was being sent on my own job for the first time. Then, there was always the off-chance that I wouldn't be returning from Forks, Washington.

Charlie was waiting for me on the other side. I'd never met him before, but I'd seen pictures of him, and obviously he knew what I looked like. As I walked off the plane he gave a smile and we awkwardly hugged each other, like a normal father and daughter would do. He looked different in real life. More tired. A little sad. Maybe it was because I looked a little like how his daughter would have looked. I was playing the part of Chief Swan's daughter, who, on the record, had gone to live with her mother ten years ago.

The reports were wrong. Charlie's girl had been murdered by _them_. That was why he was on our side, now. We had a lot of people in the police forces.

"It's good to see you, Bella," he said, the faint smile making his mustache crinkle. I tried not to wince at my new name.

"You too, Dad." That's what I was supposed to call him. In public, at least.

I didn't bring much – and none of it was truly mine. I'd been given a new set of clothes that would be suitable for the damp Northwestern weather – sweaters, jeans. That and the supplies; a year's worth of syringes and the serum that went into it, disguised as diabetes meds. I didn't need any other weapons. And personal items weren't allowed for obvious reasons.

"Got you a car," Charlie said as I fastened my seatbelt.

I wasn't expecting that. "A car?"

"You'll need it," he said. With a grunt he turned on the ignition and started pulling the cruiser out of the parking spot. "No public transportation here, and the weather's awful."

"Um, wow. Thanks." I didn't feel the need to tack on _Dad_.

Nothing else was said for the entire trip. What were we supposed to talk about – the weather? It sucked. His dead daughter? No. My assignment? Protocol said we weren't supposed to talk about it unless we had to, just in case if _they_ were listening. So instead we sat in a slightly uneasy silence.

Washington was gorgeous in a completely different way than Phoenix. Here it was soft and serene; the forests on either side of the highway towered over us like moss-covered giants, their branches eclipsing the dark grey sky. Vines and moss draped over their branches like green frost. In Phoenix, everything was sharp and bright and achingly hot. Not here. I didn't know what to think about it.

Graciously, it was a pretty short drive to Charlie's house, a tiny little thing on the edge of the town. It looked old and tired, like him. In the parking lot was a monstrous, bulbous red truck.

"Is that it?" I asked, dragging my suitcase out of the trunk.

"Yeah," said Charlie. He looked kind of embarrassed. "I know it's old –"

"It's fine," I told him. "Seriously, it was great of you to even get me a car. Thanks."

The inside of the house was significantly warmer than I expected, both in temperature and tone. It was kind of nice, and definitely not what I was expecting from an older single man.

"Your room's up the stairs," Charlie said, taking my suitcase before I could protest. I followed him up the rickety stairs, which moaned with every step, and stepped into my new room.

It was heartbreaking.

Everything about it made it obvious that this had been Charlie's little girl's bedroom. Had been. The curtains were a cheerful, faded yellow, and the walls were a pretty shade of blue. There was an oak rocking chair in one corner, and the bed had this bright little quilt in it. Charlie had tried to make it suitable for me; there was a really old computer on the desk, which looked like it had been drunkenly assembled by a new IKEA intern, and a little empty bookshelf.

Still…

"I –" I began, but when I turned around Charlie wasn't there. He had already gone back downstairs. With a sigh I turned back and surveyed the room of the girl I was pretending to be, and started unpacking.

I barely slept the entire night. Even if I wasn't starting my assignment, the fact that I was sleeping in a dead girl's room, maybe in a dead girl's bed, was enough to make anyone jittery. I hoped it wasn't a bad omen. The constant drizzle of rain didn't help. When I did finally fall asleep for an hour or two, it crept deep into my dreams.

It was five in the morning when I got up for real. The sun wasn't even up yet. Half-awake, I pawed through my suitcase, stuffing the clothes into the chest of drawers, until I found the package. A faint sense of nausea welled up, but I pushed it down, and lumbered into the bathroom, packet in hand. I flicked the light on and ripped open the package. Rows of gleaming needles and syringes flashed in the florescent light.

Well. This was it. No going back.

I had been taking the primary serum for a couple of weeks now, and I could already feel its effects. Immediately after I injected myself with it each morning, it felt like a blanket covered my mind, dulling everything. The effect wore off as the day went on, but I still hated it. I hated being dull and weak and vulnerable. But, now, that's exactly what I was supposed to be.

The secondary serum, the stuff I was about to inject into myself, was different. Much more potent. Its purpose wasn't to shield my mind, like the primary did, but to lure in my target. My prey.

That is, if I wasn't killed first.

With a sigh I rolled up my sleeve and prepared the needle. The serum was an alien, silver color, like quicksilver. The sight of it made my heart pound. Good. It would be distributed more quickly. I let out an inaudible gasp as the needle pierced my skin; with a shaking hand I pushed down, letting the serum dissipate into my bloodstream. Less than ten seconds later, it was done. I was ready.

My name is Anna Skelt. Well – it was. Now I was a girl called Bella Swan. I had come here to Forks, Washington for one reason, and one reason only.

I was here to kill a vampire named Edward Cullen. Or die trying.

But first I had to get him to fall in love with me.


	3. First Sight

**The Sleeping Swan  
**By Elleirabird

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for the reviews. Sorry for the late update.

**Synopsis:** Anna Skelt has come to forks for only one reason: to kill a vampire named Edward Cullen by getting him to fall in love with her. But there's something else lurking in the forests of Forks, something that the Order didn't know about. Something that might kill Anna first. Alternate Universe.

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**CHAPTER TWO - FIRST SIGHT**

I ended up leaving for school way too early. Mostly because of nerves.

After I injected the serum I realized that it was four in the morning, but I couldn't go back to sleep. The adrenaline rush from the needle made me wide awake. So I did some unpacking, got dressed, tried to forget that this was a dead girl's room, and watched the sun come up.

Charlie got up around six thirty. We didn't say much to each other - he made breakfast while I washed. I had absolutely no idea what to say to him. Training didn't cover "how to keep things from getting awkward with your fake family."

At seven, I left without even saying goodbye to Charlie. It wasn't that I wanted to be rude, but I had no idea what to say. I think he was glad too.

The air was crisp as I walked outside. Grass crunched under my feet. Birds sang and chattered in the trees. It was kind of relaxing. Not that anything could relax me right now.

...

The school was a sad-looking brownstone building with a faded wooden sign at the front – Forks High School, Home of the Spartans. It was a different kind of run-down than the schools that I knew briefly in Arizona; in Phoenix, every surface was assaulted by graffiti, and the ground sparkled from broken beer bottles. There were metal detectors and wired fences ambiguously placed so you could never be sure if they wanted to keep someone else out or keep you in. Here the primary enemy of the school seemed to be nature herself – odd patches of moss were creeping up the side of some of the walls, and ivy had begun to twist its way up any vertical object. It was a green winter.

A musty smell filled my nose as I trudged inside the first building I could find. The sudden warmth made my fingers tingle painfully. This was it. Past the point of no return. I swear I could feel the serum dripping through my veins, permeating my entire body. _They_ were here.

_Calm down,_ I told myself. _Remember your training. You'll be fine._

"Can I help you?"

I jumped, then caught myself and looked up. A lady sat behind a desk, with a pleasant-looking face and bright red hair.

"Um," I muttered as I approached her. "I'm Isabella Swan." The name felt like sawdust in my mouth.

Instantly her expression changed, and I guess she had heard the story that had been seeded into town to herald my coming. Mysterious long-lost daughter of the chief of police. Flighty wife. I guessed the people here ate that kind of stuff up.

I started reviewing my training to keep myself calm as the secretary gave me some papers and maps and welcomed me again.

A few minutes later I had walked over to where the map said the classrooms were. For the first time I checked my schedule, not really caring about the class so much as who was in it. English. Mr. Mason. He seemed nice too. Welcoming. Maybe a little too curious for my taste, but I guess I couldn't blame him.

I found a seat near the back and hoped that nobody would notice me too much. Obviously the wrong assumption.

"Hey there."

I glanced up from the map. A friendly-looking Asian guy, with a gangly, awkward frame, stood over me.

"I'm Eric," he said with a wide smile. "You must be Isabella, right?"

I swallowed. "Yeah. Call me Bella." I decided it was slightly less painful than Isabella. And the name Bella Swan was so hilarious it made me feel a little better.

"God, Eric," a girl said as she slid into a seat adjacent from me. "Creeper much?" She was the cookie-cutter type of beautiful, with long blonde hair and very pale skin.

"I'm just trying to be friendly," Eric said.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm Jessica. You must be Isabella – "

"Bella."

"Oh, okay."

It was kind of surprising, how nice everyone was. Genuinely nice. It was so different from what I expected. I guess they didn't get new kids all that often.

By my third class, I had managed to grasp at a few familiar faces. There was Eric, the helpful guy who I couldn't help but like, and Jessica, who maybe was a little shallow but seemed to like me well enough. Angela was a shy dark-haired girl who I probably would had been friends with in an alternate universe. They were welcome, opening. Too bad every word out of my mouth was a lie.

...

The first time I saw them was in the cafeteria.

By my lunch period, I was a raw nerve. I shouldn't have been. I should have been calm, cool, reserved. I was supposed to be like that. It was my job. But I was freaking out, alternatively wanting to just face them and get it over with and wanting to run away. But then the lunch bell rung, and I allowed myself to be herded into the cafeteria with the rest of the students, and they were there.

I knew just about everything about vampires that there was to know. Their strengths, their weaknesses. Hunting techniques. Social patterns. But it was so different, so very different, seeing them in real life. It was terrifying.

To the normal eye, they only seemed beautiful – impossibly, devastatingly beautiful. And I suppose they were. Their features were perfectly symmetrical, with perfectly angled jaws and perfectly straight noses. Their skin was flawless, like marble. Their eyes were as bright as glass. Everything about them was perfect.

Too perfect.

The human brain is designed to read faces. _Human_ faces. We are aware of every shift and roll in the human expression, every twitch of the mouth, every distinct movement of the eye. Body language makes up more than half of human communication. We are so good at reading faces that the slightest discrepancy will set off an alarm in us and make us afraid, and we can't even consciously discern _why_.

Vampires are like that. They look human. They act human. But they are farther away from being a human than any other creature on this planet.

There were six of them here in the cafeteria. I knew there were eight in total, and I knew their names. But that was it.

It was my job to find out more.

Grabbing the first things in the cafeteria line that I saw, I grabbed a seat with Jessica and Eric – they waved at me to come sit with them. I fought to keep my tray from shaking.

"Hey," I muttered after a few minutes of inane conversation. "Who are those guys?" I jerked my head vaguely in the direction of the vampires.

Jessica sniffed. "That's the Cullen family," she said. "They're new. Like you. Only been here a few years, you know? But they don't talk to anyone." She sounded bitter, and I wondered how many of the vampires she had tried to ask out.

There were five of them, sitting at that table. They all had the same sallow, pale skin the same inhuman golden eyes. But beyond that, there were differences. One of the girls was blonde and willowy, or as willowy as a lethal vampire could ever be. The other was shorter, with spiky black hair. The male vampires were all bigger. My eyes flicked over the largest of them, a muscled dark-haired creature with his arm around the blonde.

"And they're together," Jessica said. I snapped my head back to her. Shouldn't be staring so obviously. "Like, _together_ together, you know?"

Yeah, I could see that. Blonde and muscle. Spiky hair with the slim blond vampire. Only one of them was alone.

I knew it as soon as I saw him. He was the one I was after. Edward Cullen.

But I had to make sure.

"Who's that one?" I asked Jessica. She followed my gaze, and I watched as her expression visibly darkened.

"That's Edward," she sighed. I fought to keep my body from stiffening. "He's like, so hot. But apparently nobody at this school is good enough for him. Don't even try."

"Just because he didn't go out with you doesn't mean other guys aren't interested," one of the guys – Eric? Mike? I think it was Eric – smirked.

Jessica rolled her eyes. "No."

The rest of the lunch period turned into a continuous cycle where I'd pick at my food, listen to my new friends' conversation, answer their questions about me, and then surreptitiously glance over at the Cullen clan. They were so obviously different – why didn't everyone else notice? The untouched food on their trays. The jolting, hawklike way that they moved – like wolves skulking on the outskirts of a herd. Which was exactly what they were doing.

They weren't here to hunt. I knew that much. No, these vampires were different from the usual ones that I had hunted down South. Instead of being nomads, they liked staying in one place, pretending to be humans. I don't know why. But that didn't change the fact that they were vampires, and something had to be done about them.

That was my job. The Order had sent me here to try and lure them out, to learn everything I could about them. It was a new kind of program. Lure. Learn. Ambush.

The bell rang, and I practically jumped out of my chair.

"Bella, are you okay?" It was Angela. The nice girl. She looked worried.

"Um, yeah. Fine. I'm just tired." I tried to smile, but it ended up looking like a grimace. "Jet lag and all."

It was a stupid excuse. There was no jetlag. Arizona and Washington were, like, what, an hour apart? But Angela accepted my excuse, nodding. "What class do you have next?"

_Please be P.E. I need to burn off some energy. _

I checked my schedule and winced. "Bio." Crap.

"Oh, I know where that is." One of the guys, Mike, grinned. "It's on the way to APUSH. Let's go."

Mike led me through the grey, dreary halls of the school, asking me the usual set of questions as he did. Where are you from? Arizona. How you likin' the rain? It's not that bad. You don't look like someone from Arizona.

"My mom's albino," I said as a joke, but I knew it flopped as soon as I said it. Ugh. But Mike, being the nice guy, laughed as though I'd just said the funniest thing in the world.

"Here you are," he said, nodding to a door. "See you later," he called, already disappearing into the crowd.

I stared at the door. It looked like your normal biology lab. Awful blacktop tables with the squeaky stools. Stuffed animals, which was actually kind of cool. Posters about the Kreb's cycle and a timeline of evolution on Earth.

_Forgot the vampires,_ I thought, staring at the chart. Then I walked in.

I guess I was late, because everyone else was there, chatting as the teacher wrote something on the board. A couple of them stopped and stared at me. Some smiled and waved. But nobody moved.

There was only one open seat left. Just one. Right by Edward Cullen. And his eyes were no longer gold.

They were pitch black.

* * *

_So yeah, I'm mostly keeping it in line with the canon!Twilight book, but changing some things. I hated how Meyer treated the other human characters, so I'll be slowly fleshing them out. I'm also not trying so hard to make "Bella" a bitch. But it's hard...challenge accepted, Meyer._

_Cheerio._


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